Policy Compliance Rates - is less than 100% OK?

If you have 100 employees and 20 have reviewed your Company Policy Manual - is that good?

“Good” is relative, having 20 completed may be better than 5 or 10. However the main reason companies have a Policy Manual is to ensure employees are aware of the policies, rules, guidelines, and procedures to follow. Compliance may be a matter of principle, a way to increase consistency, or it could be a legal requirement such as a harassment or violence prevention requirement.

As an employer or company policy administrator you are the one with the responsibility of:

1. ensuring everyone is aware of the rules
2. everyone understands the rules and
3. everyone follows the rules.

When we can show that we have done these three tasks we are in a much better position to show we have met our responsibilities.

Let's assume our goal is 100% compliance. How do we get 100% compliance? What do we have to do to make that happen?

1. Record and measure. One of the first things we would need is a way of recording or measuring compliance. This does two things for us. First, it gives us a marker to compare where we are to where we are going. The feeling or making progress is essential to maintaining momentum on any journey. Second, it gives us a sense of priority. What gets measured gets done.
2. Policy review and verification. The second things we would need is a way to allow people to review our policy manual and ideally be able to monitor or verify that they have reviewed it, understood it and agreed to follow it. In the past, a good old fashioned distribution list was used to circulate a printed copy of a policy manual from employee to employee, there would then be a sheet where each person would sign off to acknowledge that they had in fact reviewed the document and agreed to follow it. If you have a handful of employees this still may be an effective and efficient way to get your 100% compliance in a short timeframe with a low cost. This paper based model loses its appeal as you get more and more people to where it can be completely unmanageable. It could take weeks or months to circulate a document and losing the sign off sheet could force you to restart. The time alone it takes could end up costing you more money.
3. Notification and review. Finally, use notification tools to keep staff on track with your policy training schedule. Notifications remind staff to complete and sign off on your policies. Additionally, you can resend policies out for review or send out updated policies for review with the click of a button.

When you are looking for a way to control your policy and procedure review process with the goal of a higher compliance rate, talk to us and let us know what you need. We look forward to hearing from you!

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